Walking with renewed vigour, the tranquil landscape of the woods captivated me now that I wasn't actively dying. Ascending up a slight incline, towards the Crylian Mountains, the trek was oddly cathartic, though the woods had grown quieter and quieter as I headed towards my destination. It had been a simple decision in my mind, heading away from the royal guard and towards the mountains. Not only were the Saviours likely to be with them, but the demon might've been lurking around there too, hunting for its missed prey. At least that's what I told myself, while I tried to banish the building anxiety of heading towards a place out of my most dreaded fairy tales.

It was a bit of a jump in logic, to be honest, going from the need to get stronger to heading towards one of if not the most dangerous place in the world. Gods, if the demon that attacked me was any indicator, then the seal on the mountains may be broken, and I was about to be killed in an instant by an army of just as powerful monsters. And was I even ready or well enough to scale the treacherous mountain range, as vulnerable to the elements as I am now? Banishing the thoughts from my head, I pushed on and on and on, finding myself in a comfortable void of mind, everything in my being dedicated only towards the task in front of me, erased of worldly desires. I needed to get stronger, and for now, this was the path to that strength. Even a notification blaring on the edge of my vision didn't break my dedicated trance. If I had paid any notice to it, I would've realised that it was the second time I had been offered a new Skill as I had started this climb, only that I had rejected the offer of a possible hiking Skill, feeling that I could may be offered a better mountain-climbing based Skill instead which would better prepare me for the climb. I was still unsure on the exact definition of Skills despite the helpful descriptions the system gives me, which led me into rejecting the Skill in the first place. After all, if all my knowledge of climbing and possibly even walking was transformed into a lesser Skill, would anything have been left for a possible mountain-climbing Skill to claim and be adapted?

As the incline started to level off, I prepared to take a break, finally allowing myself to rest, getting a glimpse at where the hill ended and the mountains began. I opened my status, out of interest, with a small command just because I could. And maybe because I was hoping that my Stamina might increase from my exertion too.

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  Name: Thanren of Aldfield

  Pure Sin: Envy

  Alignment: 100%

  Body: Slightly Damaged

    Stamina: 3/3

  Mind: Normal Condition

    Mana: 0/0

  Soul: Severely Disrupted

    Will: 6/6

  Skills: Entries Collapsed

[]

After closing the window of my status, disappointed at having seen no change, I took in the landscape. It was a small plateau, jutting out towards the horizon in a rocky mess of all sorts of coloured stone that met flush with the proper beginnings of the mountain range. It was there, as I was scanning the edges of the plateau, that I saw it. A small cave, hidden in a way due to the angle I was looking at it from, leading deeper into the mountains. I could barely contain my excitement as I drank deep on my canteen, trying to make anything out in the dark, looking in from a better direction.

In spite of the fact the rational part of my brain was screaming danger, my plans of scaling the Crylian Mountains got thrown out of the window, replaced by new, much more adventurous ones. There was no guarantee that the cave led anywhere, most likely eventually becoming too narrow for me to go further or even opening up into a chasm, crawling with monsters and maybe even demons. Yet, just like I somehow knew the Saviours were going to abandon me, that me, as I was, was going to die, I knew this was the right path. I could imagine the winding cave open up into a great cavern, but on one side, there would be a small out-of-the-way path, leading upwards and upwards and eventually into the light once more. I felt it in my bones that this was right, that this was meant to be.

I hesitated though. I didn't have the proper equipment for cave diving, nor any proper torches to light my way. So, instead of following my immediate instinct, I sat on the short cliff, where the plateau descended back into the treeline and watched the horizon. From where I sat I could spot the frankly massive plain where the Saviours and I were attacked, scorched and still partly on fire. As I pulled out some gathered sticks, tinder and a spare container from my rucksack, I spotted where the demon had arrived from, all the trees and landscape in its path flattened or destroyed. Wrapping some rope around the sides of the container and sticking it onto the end of the stick to form a makeshift basket for the tinder, I found where I was sent flying, and where I found the stream that had saved my life. While stuffing the alcohol-soaked tinder into the basket and the gap between the rope and the container, I followed the path I took here with my eyes, seeming so small from where I was now. Finally having finished one torch's construction, I put two more un-soaked tinder batches in my pockets, just in case the first one ran out, but keeping the bottle of alcohol in my bag, to keep it safe, although I recognised the risk of it if I needed the bottle quick.

I let my body and mind rest for a moment longer, looking onwards into the distance. The view truly was beautiful, even without a sunrise or sunset to paint it in mesmerising colour.

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I half jumped out of my skin as the notification popped up on the edges of my vision, almost dismissing it before noticing that this wasn't like the hiking Skill ones. Reading it through carefully, ignoring the annoying redacted information, I pondered over the meaning of the name.

Active Skills... it seems that unlike the almost always present Adapted Skills, these needed to be triggered manually. It was a large gamble, giving away something unknown, 'modifying' it instead of the usual adaptation of it, and transforming it into a vaguely-named Skill. If anything though, the new nature of it and its peculiar name and roots attracted me to it more. Believing in myself, I took the plunge.

"Accept."

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If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

I had braced for a loss that never came and instead received the opposite; I felt stronger. There was no cost to this, as if this Skill had always lived in me, the best it could ever be, and all the system had to do was modify it to make it usable on command. Just like any other system command, I willed it to activate.

I was beginning to think it hadn't worked until my striking view was pulled away from me, drained into an all-consuming void, leaving me with nothingness. A dead, dark nothingness that stretched on and on, forever. My mind grinded to a halt, thought becoming insignificant in the face of what I could only imagine as everything all at once, madness beginning to claim what little dregs of my sanity that remained. It was almost successful, all of my remaining conscious life close to being absorbed into the nothingness, the everything, when a blinding flash of white brought me back to existence.

I was floating over a figure draped in red, my arms hung over their shoulders, whispering sweet nothings into their ear. With a motherly smile on my now feminine face, I instructed the figure to march forward, engorge on the blood of their foes, and revel in both their and his own suffering.

The scene shifted, as I returned to my own body but this time I was a different person. Muscles rippled under my tattered clothes, distilled life vibrating with excitement as it ran up and down my limbs, following unknowable channels. A familiar broken sword lay even further broken on the floor in front of me, reduced to barely a hilt, a hilt that had been wrapped and wrapped in ropes and leather, in a desperate attempt to keep at least a part of the sword whole. Tears streamed down my face, a smile forcibly carved onto my expression, knowing for certain that the terrible carver had been me. Despite the tears, however, I was happy, kneeling on the ground as I was. No, that word was not enough to describe the emotion that was burned into my soul in that moment. I was jubilant, aroused and hysterical all at once, revelling in masochistic glee as agony coursed through me.

Shifting once more, I instinctively knew this was the last of my visions, as I was brought in front of a half-dead, exhausted boy, kneeling again at the top of a hill, shadowed demons swarming all around him. He was mourning the loss of everything he had thought he had: the loss of his treasure; the loss of his friend; and the loss of his love. Bubbling arms struck ceaselessly at the ground in rage, sending shockwaves that drove the encroaching swarm back. With each swing, his arms were reduced to stumps, before a single word was spoken by the boy, and new forearms, hands and fingers erupted outwards, regenerated. I knew I was incorporeal and invisible, floating in front of the boy, but I could've sworn he was looking at me through it all, staring past his long hair with vehement hate.

As the vision retreated, the boy mouthed something to me, a sentence that I wasn't supposed to have made out, but I understood nonetheless.

"We should've heeded the warning."

I was back in the real world the instant the vision fully dissipated, no sign of what I had experienced anywhere I looked. The only thing that confirmed that what I saw had truly happened, were two notifications.

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A seven day timer presumably until I could use the Skill again; at least that was what I could gauge from the unfamiliar word used to describe it. I shook myself free from the lingering trance of the Skill, standing up from where I sat, legs aching, and noticing that a few hours had passed at the minimum. Even still, my mind lingered on the last of the disturbing visions. That... that was me, wasn't it? All of the people in those visions was me. The figure draped in red, no, draped in blood, that grown-up kneeling monster of a man, and the boy on that hill, mourning. Me, mourning. Mourning.

Trying not to linger on what I could possibly be mourning over - and that warning - I thought about my regenerating arms, certain that it was a recovery using my resources that healed them. I was the one who had disintegrated my arms in the vision, so much more powerful than I was now than I could even comprehend. And I was still young. Young whereas the monster was older. How... how much power could I have wielded in that older body? The shear might and strength I could feel from the strange thing that flowed within me was indescribable, and I had owned it! I knew it in my heart that it was true, that the path I was about to walk was the right one. Even if I would struggle along the way, it was all going to be worth it. And that monster was the proof.

Huh.

For but a fleeting moment, a macabre idea crossed my mind. When my Will had increased in capacity, I had drained it completely the day before. Even though my Stamina didn't, my failed recovery attempt could've explained why that possibly didn't increase too. It was a gamble, but if I drained my Stamina, just like I did with my Will, could I increase it? But how, I might've pondered, if I didn't already know exactly how I would drain it. I had seen it in my vision, after all, and I might as well train my path Skills while I was at it.

Mindlessly bringing out my broken sword, naked of its leather and rope garments that it wore in the vision, I channelled my Skill. I saw the path there, the path that cut and cleaved as much as it could, while offering the least resistance to my blade too. Without preparing myself one bit, I performed the swing, seeming so perfect that it almost looked like it was choreographed, me just an actor playing out a long, sad play.

In one moment, I could see my left hand, feeling it pulse with life. In another, my hand was gone, and the feeling had dimmed, leaving a phantom impression of what was no longer there. I picked up the amputated hand from the floor, where it was spurting blood and marvelled at it, the way I could see it still act as if it was alive endlessly fascinating. However, my admiring was cut short, as my inevitable suffering had finally arrived.

"Ha."

Pain; simply pain. Nothing else, just... suffering, encroaching on and devouring my mind. Endless, endless suffering.

[]

[ Slightly Disarrayed>]

[]

"Shut up."

Feeling the lack of weight in my left arm felt odder by the second, and the inability to move my hand at all felt incredibly strange, if you also moved past the pain. I felt the warm blood ooze out of the hand I held, colouring everything red, staining my skin deeply. Squeezing it just because I could, the blood loss increased rapidly, the hand feeling colder by the second. I ignored the intensifying pain and swung my arm with all my strength, sending the hand flying through the air, before falling through the treeline and disappearing. I no longer needed it after all.

"Haha." I couldn't help but laugh, finding the way the blood streamed out of the hand while flying funny, making small spirals in its wake as it rotated mid-air. "Hahaha!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!"

[ Severely Disarrayed>]

[]

Indulging myself further in the insanity of the situation, my manic laughter grew louder and louder, echoing across the valley. Once I noticed a flock of birds soaring off a group of tress in fright though, I stopped instantly, realising that I could attract unwanted attention once more. In spite of that, I still quietly chuckled to myself, grabbing the bloody stump of my arm hard.

[]

I didn't just want this laughter, no, I needed this horrible imitation of happiness just so I could be sane. And even if I wanted to, I had no Mana to repair my trauma-riddled brain anyways! It was the only scrap of anything positive left in me, everything else burned to ash by them. And if even that was reduced to nothing? Then... then I'd truly become a demon, a monster indistinguishable to the thing that started it all, a creature of pure destruction and hatred. I would dedicate every fibre of my being to maximise the suffering I would inflict upon them, because they deserved all of that and worse. They betrayed me. They left me for dead. They're going to make everyone think I was dead. They're going to make my family mourn for me. And they're going to revel in it, enjoying the sweet nectar of life while I was swamped in hellish death.

Burning the visage of the forest into my brain, I turned around and marched into the cave opening, not looking back. With a mental flick of a command to the system, my Stamina was drained to 0/3 as flesh bubbled out of my stump, reforming into bone, blood vessels, muscle and skin that wrapped together into the shape of a new, pink hand. There was no turning back now. By the time I returned to the rest of the world, I would no longer be the weak Thanren they thought they knew. I would be more. I would be that monster, a lord of the world. I would be a Monarch. A Monarch whose divine rite was too powerful to ignore; even for them.